Picking the right digital agency to help grow your business can make or break your business. Some agencies have the skills and resources to transform your business, and therefore your life, while others could have the opposite effect and have no, or at worst, a negative impact.
Given the stakes involved, it is critical to conduct a thorough process when searching for, shortlisting, and ultimately choosing a digital marketing agency.
In this article, we cover seven important questions you should ask before hiring any digital agency.
If you want further ideas of what questions to ask, Vectis Marketing put together a list of 15 questions you should also consider.
What Are You Looking For In An Agency?
You have to identify your company’s plans and goals and identify why you would need to work with an agency. Identify the role the agency will play and whether it is significant and effective in achieving your goals.
Using a strategic plan, you can identify where the agency fits and define a scope in which it will work. Ensure that you have a good reason to partner and that your core values and the company’s drive align with what the marketing agency can offer.
Understanding your company’s needs is crucial in ensuring that you make the right decision by taking on the best marketing agency for those particular needs. Do you need SEO? Do you need social media guidance? Or just paid ads? All these are very different and not provided by all agencies.
How Will The Agency Meet Our Needs?
This question seeks to understand how the agency works. It will highlight if the agency is willing to learn and understand your work and also aim to incorporate strategies that meet your goal.
The agency should therefore immerse themselves fully in the company learning about the different challenges, needs, and goals and if there is a need to introduce various strategies. They should prove they can ring efficiency in reaching out to more people and propelling the company towards greater heights.
The agency’s learning process should also inform you if they can be reliable if given a chance. Look out for agencies that may seem too eager, as most may not be efficient.
Who Were Their Previous Clients?
Ask the agency if they have previously worked with a business like yours. You could specify details by focusing on sectors, industries, or even a different structure. Looking for a marketing agency, you have to ensure that they are well familiar with the field they are going to immerse themselves in other companies or structures will influence your decision by checking the outcome of their work.
You also want to take up a team with no dust. Always opt for an agency that prioritizes learning in building value for your company and has less conflict of interest, especially with your competitors.
Here, you could also ask to see their previous works and judge if their work is impactful.
How Would They Do Things Differently?
An action plan is essential in this stage because it highly influences how the agency plans to bring change or improve its services. You must ensure that every action or decision aligns with the company’s goals.
This is why experience is needed, as it will be easier to grow the company in different ways and include new methods and approaches that keep up with the changing trends.
This is how you will also learn if the agency is willing to go beyond what you have provided and learn more about achieving your goals effectively.
How Will They Measure Success?
Through this question, you will understand if they have a proper glimpse of the primary goal. A short explanation of their understanding of the success and goals is an excellent place to start asking since you will know how they plan to approach your goals.
One of the most crucial aspects of strategic planning is the consistency of work done which is determined by the progress shared. Good reporting and analytic skills could come in handy in this situation, whereby they will help you have a clear and meaningful update of your company’s goals and how effective the plans are.
The answer should reflect the goals and achievements you want for your company.
Will They Need To Outsource Resources?
This will tell you if the team is well prepared. It is a vital aspect of the agency, especially in understanding if the team will need a different individual to work on specific details. This is very important to actualizing the whole plan as it dramatically impacts the company’s final goal.
It is great to know that you will have qualified and experienced professionals working towards your goal.
Therefore, it is essential to know how much they will outsource and if they can handle the whole process. In this case, you have to look out how much they will need to outsource because it may indicate that they are not well experienced and thus affect the performance quality.
Will They Be Working Regularly?
While partnering with an agency, it goes by default that you will have to work with them. However, you must enquire about the duration you will partner with to ensure you have ample time to interact and learn. It is also essential that both teams meet and collaborate, especially if they are going to work together.
This will foster better communication for your company and the agency and lead to quality performance. Here you can also learn if they are effective, especially in reporting and giving regular updates and analyses based on their learned. Professionalism is essential in this case to build a better relationship for the duration they will be involved.
How Frequently Will The Updates Be Provided To You?
Communication is essential in growing a company. You will need to address this with the agency earlier on. A reliable team will help you achieve the goals within the specified team and help develop a better strategy that will impact the company.
Choose a group that effectively meets your expectations, especially in ensuring the free flow of communication as well as the growth of your company. Always ensure that you get the answers you need.
Keep also in mind that sometimes it is better to allow the agency time to do their work, and not to interrupt them too often by asking for updates. Many quality agencies will screen out customers who ask too many questions all the time as they need time to focus on their work and every time they receive a phone call from you, they are interrupted and lose the chance to be engaged in the high-value work.
How Long Until We See The Results?
Setting goals also means that they must be realistic and thus deliverable. Therefore, even with the constant communication, you must let the marketing agency know that you will need to see results.
An effective agency will provide a reasonable timeline, especially after addressing all factors involved in the process.
A good agency will be transparent about how long they anticipate results to take, and which actions will generate which impact.
If the agency is promising results that seem too good to be true, then they probably are too good to be true and you should consider an alternative agency that seems to offer more realistic timeframes in their results.
The questions listed in this article give you a starting point for the things you need to consider when choosing a digital marketing agency for your business. Based on the needs of you specific there may be some additional questions it would be good for you to ask, that are more relevant to your sector or industry.
Ella Marcotte
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